We still have very few concrete details about Destiny 2‘s next expansion, Codename: Apollo, but Bungie has provided some new, if vague, looks at what we can expect with concept art and a list of inspirations that include The Doors, Slaughterhouse Five, and Scavenger’s Reign.
Bungie talked a bit about Codename: Frontiers, the next phase of Destiny 2’s content that’ll kick off in Summer 2025, on a recent developer livestream that also covered Episode: Revenant, which starts on October 8. Narrative director Alison Luhrs showed new concept art for the expansion’s destination and provided some cryptic details about what players can expect as Destiny 2 moves into a new story.
The next year of Bungie content, which will start after the last of its current episodes, Heresy, ends in early 2025, will include two major expansions instead of one huge tentpole release, as has been the case throughout Destiny 2’s life. These expansions are smaller and will come at a more regular cadence, Bungie says, and be about the size of the original Destiny’s Rise of Iron expansion. The first, Codename: Apollo, will have a nonlinear campaign structure, Bungie says, with a metroidvania gameplay approach, allowing players to choose their path through the content as they unlock new abilities.
We know Apollo will include a new destination, but Bungie has been extremely cagey on where it’ll be. But Luhrs did give a few hints, saying during the stream that viewers should imagine the idea of going into the parlor of a mansion, where the owner says there’s a secret door. That door would be activated by moving a book or a statue–something that was in front of the person’s face the whole time, but only took on significance once they knew what they were looking for.
Luhrs also shared concept art that doesn’t give much new insight but might contain some hints as to what to expect from Apollo. The first shows a group of people seemingly performing some kind of ritual involving blue energy (or possibly goo). The symbols and other elements seen in the image don’t seem familiar, but one thing that is familiar is the background–the concept art uses an image of the Cosmodrome location on Earth to provide a rocky, tree-dotted landscape just beyond the structure. The use of an in-game image might just be filler, but then again, it might suggest that this new destination is actually a hidden location on Earth.
The second piece of concept art might also play into that theory. It looks like an underground location, somewhere in a huge cave where spires of rock hang down from above. The details here are sparse, but it’s possible to see structures among the rocks, like staircases, and possibly more of that blue energy. So maybe we’re dealing with a hidden location on Earth, maybe underground, and a group of people we’ve previously not encountered before in Destiny 2.
Developers also shared a few inspirations for Apollo that are also notably cryptic. These included the music of the 1960s, including The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and early progressive rock bands like King Crimson.
They also mentioned Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse Five–which is notably about a man’s experiences of the firebombing of Dresden in World War II and his time as a prisoner of war. The protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, also claims that he becomes unstuck in time, with the narrative jumping around to different points in his life, and that he was a prisoner in an alien zoo on the planet Tralfamadore, and it’s never made explicit whether these elements are real or imaginary.
Finally, Bungie called out Scavenger’s Reign, an animated series originally on HBO and now available on Netflix, that sees a group of humans marooned on an alien planet after their ship crashes. Assistant game director Robbie Stevens mentioned specifically how Scavenger’s Reign depicts the strangeness and mystery of its alien world.
All that leaves us with nothing but rampant speculation about Apollo, but elements like time travel are a major part of the Destiny 2 universe, especially after stories like that of The Witch Queen expansion, where the planet Mars was seen with sections where earlier times break through into the present. But really, as Bungie kicks off a new story after completing the Light and Darkness Saga in The Final Shape expansion, pretty much anything is possible for the future of Destiny 2–and it seems likely to get weird.
